Live music, reviews and opinion

News: Fairport’s Cropredy Convention 2020 Postponed

Fairport’s Cropredy Convention is the latest festival to take the step to cancel. With a mid-August date in the diary, there may have been some hope that it might take place, but the news is similar to that of many other festivals across the land.

Here at At The Barrier, Fairport’s Cropredy Convention is a festival close to our hearts. Many of the team here have, and do attend the festival religiously. Knowing the festival very well, the impact that this will have on a lot of people in the little village of Cropredy will be devastating as it is a huge source of income over the course of the festival.

The line-up of acts will be carried forward: artists booked to appear this year have agreed to switch to 2021 with tickets remaining valid (although refunds are available). Festival Director Gareth Williams said: “We have no alternative but to postpone Cropredy until 2021. The safety of our festival-goers, performers, suppliers, crew and local residents must come first.”

John Barlass shares some thoughts as an ever present at the barrier in Cropredy in this open letter to the festival.

Dear Fairport,

Like everyone associated with Fairport Convention and Cropredy Festival, we at At The Barrier were greatly saddened by the news that, inevitably under the current unprecedented circumstances, Fairport’s Cropredy Convention will not take place this year. The decision to postpone the festival is absolutely correct and your prioritisation of the safety of everyone involved is impeccable.

The Festival is the highlight of our year and we know that the same applies to yourselves, the overwhelming majority of the festival goers and to the Cropredy villagers. May we also express our massive support, as well as sympathy to the Fairport team; we know how hard you work throughout the year to make the festival a success and we can only imagine the financial impact that the postponement will have.

The great news for all of us is of course that, shattering though today’s announcement has been, it IS only a postponement! The bill you had secured for the 2020 festival is absolutely outstanding – congratulations and thanks for arranging for the whole thing to be rolled forward. Like many Fairporters, we already had the weekend of 12-14 August 2021 marked in our diaries, so you can bet that we’ll be there, and hungrier than ever for our Weekend in the Country!

Our thoughts also go out to the village of Cropredy. There’s no doubt that the annual festival provides a huge boost to the economy of the village and we really, really hope that all the village institutions: the Red Lion, The Brasenose, the shop, the cricket club, the church, the chapel, the Village Hall and all the others, manage to ride this out. At The Barrier will be doing whatever it can to cushion the blow by visiting Cropredy whenever we can to replace lost revenue behind the respective bars.

In the coming weeks, we will have some guest features from the members of Fairport Convention which will hopefully go some way to filling the huge hole left by this wonderful festival. They have each written a piece for our Why I Love column, sharing their love of their favourite artists. They are fabulous to read and contain some great stories of artists that band look up to. We have already been very lucky to have Iain Matthews, founding member of Fairport Convention, be a part of this feature. You can read his piece here.

What will you miss the most about Fairport’s Cropredy Convention this year? Let us know in the comments below.